'We'll be another hour or so…' Cassie said. Her green eyes were like lamps peering through the dark paint.
'How about some French food? I mean, later, if you're not doing anything.'
'Sounds great.' She stepped away and said, 'About an hour.'
Lucas walked halfway up the rising bank of seats and settled in to watch. Whiteface was a brutal but cheerful attack on latter-day segregation. A dozen set pieces were combined with rewritten nineteenth-century show tunes. There were frequent halts to argue, to change lines, to choreograph body positions. Twisting through the set pieces, the troupe kept up a running vaudeville: juggling, tap and rap dancing, joking, banjo-playing.
One manic set involved the two black actors as professional golfers, trying to sneak through a segregated southern country club. Cassie, in a play within a play, took the part of a white southern college belle in blackface, trying to sort out her relationship with a black radical in whiteface.
In a darker piece, a burly man in a wide snap-brimmed felt hat robbed white passersby in a park. Although he was obviously in blackface, none of the victims, when they were talking to the cops, could ever get beyond the blackness, even though they knew…
When that segment was over, there was a brief, sharp argument about whether it violated the pace and feel of the rest of the show. The two black actors, who were used as arbiters of taste, split on the question. One, who seemed more involved in the technical aspects of playmaking, thought it should go; the other, more interested in the social impact, insisted that it stay.
The artistic director turned and looked up into the seats.
'What do the police think?' he called.
'I think it's pretty strong,' Lucas said. 'It's not like the rest of the stuff, but it adds something.'
'Good. Let's leave it, at least for now,' the director said.
When they were done, Lucas sat with Cassie and a half-dozen other actors while they cleaned the paint off their faces. The man who played the mugger was not among them. On the way out, Lucas saw him on the stage, working on a dance he did late in the show.
'Carlo,' Cassie said. 'He works at it.'
They ate and went to Lucas' house. Cassie flopped on the living room couch.
'You know what the worst part of being poor is? You have to work all the time. You're rich, you can take six weeks to veg out. That's what I need: about six weeks of daytime TV.'
'Better'n watching the news, anyway,' Lucas said. He lifted her legs, sat down on the couch and dropped them in his lap. 'At least with the soaps, you know you're getting bullshit.'
'Hmph. Well, we could get really philosophical about the media and have an intelligent conversation, or we could go fool around,' Cassie said. 'What'd you want to do?'
'Guess,' Lucas said.
Later in the evening, Del called. 'Sorry about the other day…'
' 'S okay,' Lucas said. 'What's happening?'
'I've been out with Cheryl twice and she's starting to talk,' he said. 'I keep telling her I don't want to hear it, and she keeps talking.'
'Told you,' Lucas said.
'Asshole,' said Del. 'I actually kind of like her… Anyway, she thinks Bekker might be on some kind of drug. Speed or coke or something. She said he'd sometimes act nuts, he'd be fuckin' her and he'd go a little crazy, start raving, spitting…'
'Sex freak?'
'Well, not exactly. The sex, I guess, was pretty conventional, it's just that he'd kind of lose control. He'd come after her with this really ferocious rush, and then afterwards, it was almost like she was a piece of furniture. Didn't want to hear her talk, didn't want to cuddle up. Usually he'd bring something to read, until he got it up again, and then he'd start freaking out all over.'
'Hmph. That's not exactly the worst thing I've ever heard…'
'Well, I'm gonna see her again tomorrow.'
'Is there any way we can let Bekker know you're seeing her?'
Del sounded surprised. 'What for?'
'Maybe push him a little? We got the surveillance running, so there shouldn't be any problem for her.'
'Well… yeah, I guess we could work something out. Maybe I could get her to call him, let it slip somehow…'
'Try,' Lucas said.
CHAPTER 19
The phone rang at three in the morning.
Cassie lay on her back, barely visible in the light from a streetlamp filtering through the blinds, the sheet pulled up around her throat, clutched there with two fists, as though she were dreaming sad dreams.
Lucas tiptoed into the kitchen and picked it up.
The dispatcher, with an overlay of personal concern: 'Lucas, this is Kathy, at Dispatch. Sorry to wake you up, but there's a guy on the phone, says he's a doctor, says it's about your daughter…'
His heart stopped. 'Jesus. Patch him through.'
'I'll push the button…'
There was a moment of electronic vacancy, then the sound of somebody breathing, waiting.
'This is Davenport,' Lucas snapped.
There was no immediate response, but the feeling of a presence, a background sound that might have been a distant highway.
'Hello, God damn it, this is Davenport.'
A man's voice came back, low, gravelly, atonal, artificially clipped, the words evenly spaced, as though a robot were reading from a script: 'There is nothing wrong with your daughter. Do you know who this is?'
Lucas had listened to the tapes. Loverboy. 'I… yes, I think so.'
'Give me your phone number.' The voice was from Star Wars, from Darth Vader. No contractions. No sloppy constructions. Scripted and pared to the bone. 'Do not make a call. I will call you back within five seconds. If your line is busy, I will be gone. I have a pencil.'
Lucas gave him the phone number. 'You're gonna call…'
'Five seconds.' There was a click and Lucas said, 'Kathy, Kathy? Are you still on the line? God damn it.' The dispatcher was gone, and Lucas hung up. A second or two later, the phone rang once.
Lucas snatched it up. 'Yeah.'
'I want to help, but I can not help directly,' the voice grated, still on the script. 'I will not come out. How can I help?'
'Did you send us a picture? I gotta know, just for identification.'
'Yes. The cyclops. The killer does not look like the cyclops. The killer feels like the cyclops. His head looks like a pumpkin. There's something wrong with it.'
'Not to say you're lying, but that sounds like the one-armed man, in that TV show a long time ago,' Lucas said, letting a tint of skepticism color his voice. Reaching for control. Cassie came into the kitchen, sleepy, rubbing her eyes, drawn by the tone of his voice.
'Yes, The Fugitive,' Loverboy said. 'I thought of that. Where did you get an artist's drawing of me?'
Loverboy had seen Carly Bancroft on TV3. 'Let me ask the questions for a minute, okay? If you get spooked, I don't want you ditching me before I get them out. Do you know of any connection between either of the Bekkers and Philip George?'
'No.' There was a moment of hesitation, and then, off the script, voiced a notch higher, inflection: 'I've speculated…' He changed his mind, and his voice, in midsentence: 'No.' The robot control again.
'Look,' Lucas said. 'You've got a conscience. We've got a fuckin' monster out there killing people and he might not be done yet. We need every scrap we can get on the case.'
